Borderlands 2
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Page 108

I'll go in to more detail as to why so many people are disappointed with the loot system in this game. Partly it's because it fails in comparison to the first game, but there's more than that.

Oranges in the first game were another tier of weapons, they slotted in to the scale system after purple.

In BL2, they removed the orange weapons class and made them uber-rare uniques that are extremely difficult to obtain unless you get extremely lucky. It was far more rewarding and addictive, you wanted to play more because the chance of good loot was much higher, while at the same time it never felt like it was giving away all the good stuff too easily. That's balance.

To look at it another way, a comparison of the rarity index in both games:

This made the Borderlands 1 end game awesome. As you play there's a scale, you start out getting mostly whites and greens, as you progress you start to see more blues, then purples become more common, then by the end of PT2, oranges are a regular weapons class just like the other colours. It was a great and balanced system, they added in Pearlescent as a bonus tier for hardcore players, which we all appreciated. Now in BL2, that scale of progression disappears towards the end of the game. They replaced an entire weapons tier with a system that forces you to kill bosses hundreds of times each just to obtain a weapons class that became standard towards the end of the first game. That's why people are left feeling unsatisfied.

Purple is basically the top "standard" tier of weapon in Borderlands 2, and purple weapons really are not that interesting by the end of the second playthrough. You're left with either grinding bosses for hours on end, or not getting these weapons at all, and it sucks. I cannot understand why anybody would defend this system, and I can only assume it's because they don't understand why the loot system was so good in the first game. There are more issues that involve parts variables that I can't even be bothered getting in to with this post.

As I said, you're comparing apples with onions. Pealescents didn't come in until Knoxx dlc. Knoxx wasn't the 1st dlc, can't remember if it was 2nd or 3rd, but Doctor Ned's was 1st and didn't introduce Pearlescents.

The whole concept that people feel they "have to" or are "forced to" as Ecu puts it, grind away 100s of hours of their life to get a rare loot drop is so depressing. You're not forced to at all. This is a game with a massive amount of weapons.

And when they've finally got that uber rare gun - its time for another 100 hours grinding for the next one, then the next.

As I said in a previous post, if people said "as an obsessive compulsive gotta get em all gamer BL2 is a nightmare time sink for me" that's a fine statement to make.

But to say the game design is broken because ultra rare loot is ultra rare is just wrong. And to use the fact that it's a different system to BL1 to prove your point is just BS. You could counter by saying BL1 was flawed as there was no genuinely rare items.

I really don't understand the 'need' people feel to aquire so many orange types. It certainly isn't because the game is too hard without them. having more then one on your set-up just breaks the game anyway.

richardiox wrote:
The whole concept that people feel they "have to" or are "forced to" as Ecu puts it, grind away 100s of hours of their life to get a rare loot drop is so depressing. You're not forced to at all. This is a game with a massive amount of weapons.

And when they've finally got that uber rare gun - its time for another 100 hours grinding for the next one, then the next.

As I said in a previous post, if people said "as an obsessive compulsive gotta get em all gamer BL2 is a nightmare time sink for me" that's a fine statement to make.

But to say the game design is broken because ultra rare loot is ultra rare is just wrong. And to use the fact that it's a different system to BL1 to prove your point is just BS. You could counter by saying BL1 was flawed as there was no genuinely rare items.

The developers said they want people to keep playing this game for years.

It would make a whole lot more sense if the legendaries could drop anywhere at all, instead of copying the MMO system where the rare stuff only drops from the bosses. People have kept playing BL1 for years but I'm going to hazard a guess that many people aren't going to keep doing the "kill, save, reload, rinse and repeat" thing for years.

(apparently you can find legendaries from chests and vendor machines too, but I assume that's like winning the lottery. I saw a test that suggested the chance of getting one from a one-armed bandit was a 1/2400 chance).

richardiox wrote:
The whole concept that people feel they "have to" or are "forced to" as Ecu puts it, grind away 100s of hours of their life to get a rare loot drop is so depressing. You're not forced to at all. This is a game with a massive amount of weapons.

And when they've finally got that uber rare gun - its time for another 100 hours grinding for the next one, then the next.

As I said in a previous post, if people said "as an obsessive compulsive gotta get em all gamer BL2 is a nightmare time sink for me" that's a fine statement to make.

But to say the game design is broken because ultra rare loot is ultra rare is just wrong. And to use the fact that it's a different system to BL1 to prove your point is just BS. You could counter by saying BL1 was flawed as there was no genuinely rare items.

The loot system element is somewhat broken, yes. The fact that duping is significantly more rife in this game than the first one is actual proof that they got something wrong. I NEVER duped in the first game, because they gave out decent items at a reasonable rate and you could play any section of the game and stand a chance of finding good items. Yet I have dupes in BL2.

The fact is, to get the best loot, you need to grind bosses. Your choice is:

- Grind for hundreds, if not thousands of hours to get the best loot
- Don't grind, get very little or none of the best loot

Both of these situations are undesirable. From a game design point of view, I'm not sure why they would push players towards this. If you're a casual player then you probably don't care, you're probably happy with the weapons that are already in the game. But if you're a hardcore player where the game begins at level 50, well they have failed those players. There's nothing wrong with having items that are super rare, but locking the majority of the unique top end weapons behind bosses with horrible drop rates is bad design no matter which way you want to spin it. This isn't fun for anybody. It makes the rest of the game when you're fighting normal enemies kinda dull in that you have no chance of getting good loot. It damages replayability, which the first game had in spades. Absolutely no idea why people are defending this system, none at all. Unless you're a masochist, I dunno..

And you missed my point by saying BL1 was flawed because there was no rare items. There WERE very rare items. The oranges had a scale:

Yellow
Orange
Dark Orange

Dark Orange is very rare. That's my whole point, BL1 had a scale where the items got gradually rarer. BL2 gets to the point of purple, then there's NOTHING until the very very rare legendaries. And again, E-Tech doesn't count because they're a specific type. They have their own colour class but they have a particular style to them. I really don't know why Gearbox changed a system that was almost perfect to begin with. I'll be vindicated because the system in BL3 will be more like it was in the first game than the second, Gearbox will admit they got it wrong. FWIW I do like the idea of bosses dropping rare loot, just don't make it the ONLY way.

I do still love the game by the way. It's just one bit of disappointment, the one thing I think the first game did better. I played BL1 up until about a year before the second game came out, and I was hoping to be playing BL2 up until BL3, but that's not going to happen. It was great while it lasted though.

The big difference for me, is in the vending machines and chests. It's very rare to see something decent in a vender. The chests don't give the same sense of discovery as the 1st game. But I really can't see much of a difference in the enemy drop rate. I've not been farming though.

This. This is what disappoints me the most about BL2 because in most respects, it's better than BL1. Just about everything decent I currently use was either gotten from Moxxi, the golden chest, or farmed from bosses. Barely anything was a quest rewards or out of vending machine. I've got a curious orange rifle from a machine in Oasis I'm using with my sniper currently, it sprays fire horizontally when you aim, making shooting groups easier, but that's about it.

andyc1980 wrote:
Just wondering i anyone else who has been hit by the badass rank reset, has also lost all skins,heads,golden keys and weapons in claptraps stash

That's what commonly happens. I lost everything you mention apart from the loot in Claptrap's stash, but only because it was empty at the time.

According to a post over in the Badass Rank Reset Bug thread on the Gearbox forums they are close to a fix. It looks like it would cover the Badass Rank itself, and any tokens/skins/heads gained from your BA rank. But it WOULDN'T cover any other heads/skins lost or golden keys.

"Fixed bug causing Tediore reloads to get Amplify shield damage bonuses for each round remaining in the clip."

Bee nerfed.

Most high end bosses HP and shields increased.

Mass rage incoming.

Bosses are now mere giant bullet sponges that won't go down properly unless playing with 3 people minimum. Solo and two player play will require enormous amounts of patience and luck. At least the patch has lots of bug fixes.

The thing that needed to be fixed - drop rates - hasn't been touched whatsoever.

Nerfed the power levelling exploit too. Guess I'm pretty much done with this game now.

The fixes make sense I suppose, but they all make the game less fun and more tedious. Using the flesh stick exploit was cheap, but allowed you to get characters to high levels without playing through the story 10 times. You could get extra bank space by farming Terramorphous for eridium. They limited the inventory so mules are a must, now you have to grind through the story for the nth time just to get enough eridium to buy the inventory upgrades and bank slots. It wouldn't have hurt the game to keep these exploits in, just throw us a bone for christssake. It's bad enough you have to play a three hour long intro every time you start a new playthrough.

khaz wrote:
Bosses are now mere giant bullet sponges that won't go down properly unless playing with 3 people minimum.

Err.. to be fair, that's what the raid bosses were designed for in the first place. The only people who could realistically solo them were specialised Axtons, or other classes that were cheesing with the Bee or Smasher super-weapon glitches.

I'm done for the moment, but will definitely be back when the next DLC hits. I haven't had nearly as many issues with the game that others have had - 1 and a half playthroughs, quite a bit of time, and I enjoyed pretty much every bit of it. And the DLC was ace.

Although the "protect the beacon" mission can fuck right off. Thankfully there were only a handful of "protect this!" missions. Do not want.

And yes, I would have liked more bank space. But then I'm not really a collector, so that annoyed me less than it has annoyed others.

Great game, and really easy to set up in co-op as well. Twas money well spent.